"Solar industry executives are worried about the reliability of their own products. In an article this week, the New York Times reportsindustry executives are becoming increasingly concerned about the rising number of solar panel failures. The average expected operational lifetime of a solar panel is 25 years,
but some are failing in only two years. Increasingly, it seems that
solar panels are becoming defunct earlier than anticipated.

According to the article:

"The solar panels covering a vast warehouse roof in the
sun-soaked Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles were only two years
into their expected 25-year life span when they began to fail. Coatings
that protect the panels disintegrated while other defects caused two
fires that took the system offline for two years, costing hundreds of
thousands of dollars in lost revenues.

It was not an isolated incident. Worldwide, testing labs, developers,
financiers and insurers are reporting similar problems and say the $77
billion solar industry is facing a quality crisis just as solar panels
are on the verge of widespread adoption.

No one is sure how pervasive the problem is. There are no
industry wide figures about defective solar panels. And when defects
are discovered, confidentiality agreements often keep the manufacturer’s
identity secret, making accountability in the industry all the more
difficult.

But at stake are billions of dollars that have financed solar
installations, from desert power plants to suburban rooftops, on the
premise that solar panels will more than pay for themselves over a
quarter century."

Subsidies and the associated pressures to reduce costs, boost sales,
and reduce government debt are the principal cause of the decline in
quality:

After incurring billions of dollars in debt to accelerate
production that has sent solar panel prices plunging since 2009,
Chinese solar companies are under extreme pressure to cut costs.

Because the precipitous drop in solar panel prices has
reduced profits, manufacturers have begun to seek cheaper materials in
order to drop production costs and meet these external pressures.
Cheaper materials, however, are often unreliable and prone to failure.

The problems facing solar panels also appear to be widespread.

“A review of 30,000 installations in Europe by the German
solar monitoring firm Meteocontrol found 80 percent were
underperforming. Testing of six manufacturers’ solar panels at two
Spanish power plants by Enertis Solar in 2010 found defect rates as high
as 34.5 percent.” “In the Netherlands, René Moerman, chief strategy
officer of Solar Insurance and Finance, said claims had risen 15 percent
recently. He said an inspection of a solar plant in Britain in March
revealed that 12 percent of the newly installed Chinese-made modules had
failed. He said confidentiality agreements prevented him from naming
the manufacturer.”

Despite the rise in the number of failures and increasing doubts
about the solar industry’s viability from the industry’s own executives, the Obama Administration continues to support the solar energy
industry. Recently, the President announced a plan to make permanent subsidies for solar panels.
In light of these clear concerns, such policies are indicative of the
administration’s

relentless zeal for ineffective solutions at the
expense of taxpayers." via Tom Nelson

"“We need to face up to the fact that corners are being cut,” said Conrad Burke, general manager for DuPont’s billion-dollar photovoltaic division, which supplies materials to solar manufacturers.

The solar developer Dissigno
has had significant solar panel failures at several of its projects,
according to Dave Williams, chief executive of the San Francisco-based
company.

“I don’t want to be alarmist, but I think quality poses a long-term
threat,” he said. “The quality across the board is harder to put your
finger on now as materials in modules are changing every day and
manufacturers are reluctant to share that information.”

"When two weeks ago we reported on
the core retail sales "beat", we were surprised. Here's why: "Retail
sales ex autos were in line with expectations at -0.1%, on expectations
of a -0.2% print, but it was the sales number ex-autos and gas which surprised the most, rising 0.6% on expectations of a +0.3% increase, up from a -0.1% decline." We are no longer surprised. Reuters has the answer:

And, as a reminder, the consensus was for a +0.3% print. So instead
of a 100% beat relative to consensus, it was a 50% miss. Why did this
happen: from the Census Bureau:
"retail sales estimates were revised to reflect the introduction of a
new sample, new seasonal factors, and results of the 2011 Annual Retail
Trade Survey."

Of course, the algos who bid stocks up on the flashing
read headline of this now outdated and flawed "beat", will certainly go
back and sell all the stocks they were otherwise going to buy, since it
is now a "miss.""

"Year
after year, the U.S. pays more into the United Nations system than any
other nation. Yet figuring out exactly how much we spend on the U.N. and
its affiliated organizations is deceptively difficult.

Although
most U.S. contributions come from the State Department, hundreds of
millions of dollars also flow from other parts of the federal
government. Thus, relying on State Department data fails to capture the
full picture.

In
2006, Senator Tom Coburn addressed this issue by asking the White House
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a comprehensive report on
total U.S. contributions to the U.N. system for fiscal years 2001
through 2005. The OMB is in charge of overseeing the preparation of the
president’s budget, so it was in a position to require all U.S. agencies
to report the requested information.

That 2006 report
was an eye-opener. The OMB calculated that U.S. contributions totaled
$4.115 billion in 2004 and $5.327 billion in 2005. By comparison, the
State Department had estimated 2004 contributions at “well over $3 billion” — far short of the actual amount reported by the OMB.

Five years later, the OMB reported that FY 2010 contributions the U.N. system exceeded $7.691 billion — more than $1.3 billion higher than the previous record, set the year before. Indeed, 2010 marked the third consecutive year in which U.S. contributions had reached a new high.

Unfortunately,
the mandate requiring the OMB to report on U.S. contributions to the
U.N. system expired in 2011, and

the Obama administration has chosen not
to report this information since then.

As a result, there is no
comprehensive accounting of U.S. contributions to the U.N. system for FY
2011 or FY 2012. Nor will we know how much will be spent this year or
in the future, unless Congress renews the OMB report mandate.

Republicans Senator Mike Lee and Representative Mo Brooks have introduced legislation to fix this lapse. Whether you favor cutting
U.S. contributions to the U.N. or increasing them, everyone should agree
that good governance requires that the U.S. accurately track and report
those contributions to Congress and the public. "

"The leader of the House Tea Party Caucus, Rep. Michele Bachmann, may have announced her retirement, but organizers of the caucus say the tea party presence in Congress is far from dead. In fact, it’s expanding to the Senate, POLITICO has learned.

The group plans to invite all Republicans in the upper chamber instead of limiting it to those supported by the tea party.

“What we’re going to put on in July in the Senate is going to be
unprecedented,” said Niger Innis, chief strategist of the group.

It’s unclear what role Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will play at the meeting. At a recent press conference on the IRS targeting tea party groups, Bachmann called Paul “the chair of the Tea Party Caucus in the U.S. Senate.”

An official Senate Tea Party Caucus does not yet exist, and Paul’s
office did not respond to requests for comment on whether he would lead
the meeting, but he did not dispute the title at the time. Innis said that although the group is disappointed to see Bachmann
leave Congress, her retirement will not affect the House group....

Bachmann, facing investigations and a tough reelection race,
announced early Wednesday that she would not seek a fifth term. Her
retirement follows the departure of other tea party favorites — former
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), who lost his seat in the 2012 election, and
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who left to run The Heritage Foundation." via Lucianne

=================================

TheTeaParty.net is exposed along with its pals CPAC, Grover Norquist
and Suhail Khan. Following are 9+ links explaining plus some financial information from the group's website:

Again from TTP.net website: 16. "TheTeaParty.net employs two "Freedom Lobbyists" who work with the
Tea Party Caucus in Congress to pass legislation in line with the core
values of the Tea Party movement."...

"Grassroots group formsfirst ever Tea Party advocacy
group, including former Congressman J.D. Hayworth, conservative
activists Niger Innis and Bob Adams, to push for smaller government on
Capitol Hill"

Washington D.C. - "The nation’s largest Tea Party
group announced today the creation of its new advocacy arm — the first
of its kind. With over 600,000 members and over 1.3 million supporters
on Facebook, TheTeaParty.Net has
been a leading opponent of any legislation that increases taxes or
raises the debt, including this week’s deal on the fiscal cliff...."TheTeaParty.net is a national non-profit 501(c)(4) organization created
in 2009 for the education and advancement of the constitutional
conservative values of the Tea Party movement."

"Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, himself considered a conservative
icon, blasted this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference for
drowning out tea partiers and those concerned with social issues,
lamenting, “That’s not the CPAC that I’ve always thought of or known.”Saying he was concerned that“I might just drum myself out of a
movement,” Limbaugh blamed the “ruling class” at CPAC for missing the
message of the 2010 election, namely that there is “an

unmistakable
conservative ascendancy happening in this country,”

evidenced most
prominently in the tea-party movement.

“But at CPAC, you didn’t get the impression here that there was a
conservative ascendancy going on.

You had a lot of people saying, ‘We
gotta do something about that faction,’” Limbaugh said on his program
today. “The tea party was under assault in its own way at CPAC. And you
in the tea party understand full well

the ruling class is not happy with
you.And it was clearly obvious.”...

"Does the left ever hold a convention and say,
‘You know what,we gotta get rid of the Huffington Post people,’ or ‘We
gotta deemphasize the Daily Kos?’ Does the left ever do anything it does
to appeal to its enemies?”"... .

=============================.

More on GOP co-opting, an early tea party activist who mailed tea bags to congress and pres. says tea party movement has been hijacked by GOP. GOP 'has stolen anger of a population'fed up with GOP theft of their tax money, funneling it to Wall St. and electing cronies: 10/20/10, "To The Tea Party: Go Screw Yourself," market-ticker.org

The Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with

The Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the ****ing money! ...

The Tea Partywas and
is about the the corruption of American Politics and the blatant and
outrageous theft from all Americans that has resulted. It is about
personal responsibility and enforcement of the law against those who
have robbed, financially raped and pillaged the nation.Yet today we hear literally nothingabout these issues among the so-called "Tea Party" candidates and their backers."...

"Unemployment in the eurozone has reached another record high, according to official figures. The seasonal-adjusted rate for April was 12.2%, up from 12.1% the month before.

An extra 95,000 people were out of workin the 17 countries that use the euro, bringing the total to 19.38 million. One in four people in Greece and Spain are now unemployed. The lowest unemployment rate is in Austria at 4.9%.

The European Commission's statistics office, Eurostat, said
Germany had an unemployment rate of 5.4% while Luxembourg's was 5.6%. The highest rates are in Greece (27.0% in February 2013), Spain (26.8%) and Portugal (17.8%)....

Figures from the Italian government showed 40.5% of young people in Italy are unemployed.. "We have to deal with the social crisis, which is expressed
particularly in spreading youth unemployment,and place it at the centre
of political action," said Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano."...

"India's economy grew at its slowest pace in a decade during the 2012-13financial year, figures show. The economy grew by 5% over the year, after having grown at an annual pace of 4.8% in the January-to-March quarter.

India was recording annual growth of 9% until two years ago,
but in recent months it has seen a sharp decline blamed on a slowdown in
its manufacturing and services sectors.

pomp and expensive grandeur as the President of the United States of America.

While lesser mortals
– the Pope, Queen Elizabeth and so on – are usually happy to let their
hosts handle most of the security and transport arrangements when they
venture beyond their home shores, the United States creates a
mini-America on the move to ensure that nothing is left to chance."...=======================

.
"One significant factor is the perceived arrogance and corruption of urban elites. The marginalisation of poorer communities...has further
alienated them from the governing classes. Disgruntled young men have been happy to join radical groups that not only offer them an ideology, but money."

"With Islamist militant
groups across the Sahara region still able to flex their muscles despite
the French intervention in Mali, former UN diplomat and security expert
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah considers their threat to Africa.

The countries of North and West Africa have become embroiled
in a new war waged by violent Islamist militants - a conflict that has
no front line.

Last week's suicide assaults in Niger on a military base and
French-run uranium mine, and a siege in January of the gas plant in
Algeria reveal the insurgents' ruthless tactics.

And the start of the withdrawal of French troops from Mali,
four months after recapturing northern cities from Islamist insurgents,
is being touted by the militants on internet forums as the beginning of
their victory.

They also have connections in northern Nigeria, especially with home-grown militant group Boko Haram.

CocaineAnalysts believe there are dormant cells in many large cities, including most capitals in the Sahel region. There are several reasons that this network of militancy has flourished.

One significant factor is the perceived arrogance and corruption of urban elites.

The marginalisation of poorer communities - both in rural
areas and smaller towns - and minority ethnic groups has further
alienated them from the governing classes.

Disgruntled young men have been happy to join radical groups that not only offer them an ideology, but money.

And it is the widespread drug trafficking in the region that is believed to have enriched militant groups.Details about the operations are sketchy - large amounts of money are involved to ensure secrecy and loyalty.

A kilogramme of cocaine bought in Latin
America for $3,000 (£1,990) can be sold in the capitals of West Africa
for about $16,000; in North Africa it sells for $25,000 and can fetch
about $45,000 in Europe.

Getting involved in the transit business as the conveyor or
security agent provides not only a good salary but also the social
recognition that money brings.

This is a tantalising prospect to many unemployed young men.

Western hostage taking is no less profitable for militant
groups - and is another "business" that has grown in the last 10 years. Between 80m-100m euros ($103m-130m) is estimated by the
Center for Strategy and Security in the Sahel Sahara to have been paid
in ransoms in this time, despite both the United Nations and the African
Union discouraging such payments.

Information technology has been a great help to a hard core
of between 350 and 450 experienced AQIM fighters estimated to work
within the coalition of Islamist militant groups in the Sahel and Sahara
region.
The leadership and high ranking officers are mostly Algerians
and Mauritanians, but increasingly the Sahelians are moving up the
ladder.

They are very mobile and knowledgeable about the region, can
often avoid detection and the monitoring of their communications, and
can count on hundreds of determined militias and armed sympathisers.

AQIM has its roots in groups in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia.
One of its key affiliates is the well-disciplined Mujao group, which was
active in Mali and claimed responsibility for last week's Niger
attacks.

There is also believed to be a connection between AQIM and the
growing piracy of the Gulf of Guinea - similar to the situation in
Somalia where the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabab group has strong links
with pirates operating in the Indian Ocean.

In both cases the main objective is to expand the source of
their funding and to enlarge their popular support through
redistribution of the loot.

Last summer also saw reports of a liaison between the
Islamist militants in the Sahel, al-Shabab and a few other "informal
units" operating in the porous borders area between Chad, Libya and
Sudan.

Al-Shabab militants were reported to have travelled overland to Mali disguised as Koranic students or merchants.

En route it is believed they stayed in safe houses in major cities
before joining groups in the AQIM network to share experiences. The groups interact on more of an informal than a
co-ordinated basis - facilitated by lax border controls and territorial
continuity.

They also exploit the tribal systems and relationships between ethnic groups, using them to their advantage. Most rebel groups' supplies and logistics come down from the Maghreb or the fighters seize them by force from local armies.

Frustrated border populations either help the combatants or
fail to report on them to government officials, despite being given
Thuraya satellite phones to do so. Today, however, the Sahel and Sahara region is at a crossroads. There is an opportunity for the region's governments to get a grip on the situation and take advantage of France's gains.

Improving economies coupled with nascent freedoms in North
Africa could also help improve weak governance, a major ingredient of
terrorism.

In coalition with the private sector and civil society
organisations, they could fight poverty and disenfranchisement, which
could help quell the rebellion. But there is only a short window of opportunity.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah is the former UN envoy for Somalia
and West Africa and now runs the Center for Strategy and Security in the
Sahel Sahara in Mauritania"

========================

among comments to BBC

================== "44.nodream3 Hours ago

I
sincerely believe we get it wrong when we link the expansion of
islamist threats in Africa with poverty. As most of the suicide bombers
are from rich families or were born and breed in Europe. Africans living
in Africa are just victims of people who are eager to make a name for
themselves for the sake of religion"

"This spring is on track to be the coldest for more than 50 years, provisional Met Office figures suggest. This month has seen lower than average temperatures and it has been wetter than usual, forecasters said.

The UK's mean temperature for spring - based on figures from 1 March to 28 May - is currently 6C.
If conditions stay the same in the last days of May, it will
be the coldest spring since 1962, and the fifth coldest since records
began in 1910....

The provisional temperature for this spring goes against recent form
for the season, forecasters said, with eight of the past 10 years seeing
warmer than average springs compared to the long-term (1981-2010)
average of 7.7C.

The main reason for the low temperatures in spring was a
colder than usual March, which had a mean temperature of 2.2C to 3.3C
below the long-term average. This made it the coldest March since 1962. The forecasters added that the colder than average conditions
had been caused by frequent easterly and northerly winds, bringing cold
air to the UK from polar and northern European regions.

"The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday will hear testimony
from some of the conservative groups that received extra scrutiny from
the IRS.

The hearing is the first scheduled with Tea Party
groups, and the fifth in general focusing on the IRS’s targeting of
groups seeking tax-exempt status. Ways and Means held the first hearing
on the issue on May 17 and is now scheduled to be the first to hold
multiple hearings on the matter."...via Lucianne

"It’s almost as if the mainstream media is defining the U.S. housing market
as being “hot,” while some economists are calling for robust growth
ahead. But the reality is that we are far from a recovery in the housing market and more troubles could follow.

As I have discussed in these pages many
times before, institutional investors are running to buy homes for
rental income, because the yields elsewhere are getting thinner. As a
result, we’ve experienced hikes in home prices in the U.S. housing
market.

Institutional investors rushed to buy
homes with the philosophy of buy cheap, renovate, and rent. But they
might be in for a surprise. According to real estate research firm
Trulia Inc., since 2005, there have been almost four million
single-family homes added to the rental market. That supply has met the
demand created during the crisis in the housing market. (Source: Trulia
Inc., April 4, 2013.)

As a result, the rental rates that
institutional investors were banking on are actually compressing. Take a
look at the table below, which depicts the year-over-year change in
rental rates and home prices in some major cities in the U.S. economy.

As institutional investors are paying more for homes, their rental income is getting softer.

And the fact of the matter is that we
are missing the most important piece of the puzzle for a real housing
market recovery—first-time home buyers. Existing-home sales reported by
the National Association of Realtors (NAR) showed that in April,
first-time home buyers accounted for only 29% of the purchases in the
housing market—a decline of more than 17% from April of 2012, when
first-time home buyers accounted for 35% of all the existing-home sales.
(Source: National Association of Realtors, May 22, 2013.)

And there are other troubling issues in
the housing market; more than a quarter of all homes with a mortgage in
the U.S. housing market had negative equity in the first quarter of
2013, while 18.2% of homeowners didn’t have enough equity to be able to
cover the related costs of selling or moving into another home. (Source:
Zillow, May 23, 2013.)

All of this is just simply adding to my
skepticism toward the housing market recovery. At the very best, the
U.S. housing market is still very anemic." via Free Republic

"The protest was held in Maitland, Florida, a short drive north of
Orlando and not surprisingly, North Lake Tea Party, long the standard
bearer of the Central Florida tea party movement, was on hand.

The tea party was acting on a call to action by Tea Party
Patriots Inc., which bills itself as the nation’s largest tea party
organization, in response to recent admissions by IRS officials that the
agency had intentionally targeted tea party and conservative groups. A scandal that continues to grow in scope with each passing day.

Under the watchful eye of Homeland Security —
yes, they were present — protesters carried signs that read “We Do Not
Consent to Tyranny,” “Abolish the IRS” and “Don’t Target me Bro!,”
making it clear they do not condone the use of the IRS as a political weapon.

As one protester noted, it’s insulting that Homeland Security
felt the need to be present as American citizens exercise their first
amendment right,

but decide to look away

when suspected Islamic
terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev travels back and forth to his home country.

Gateway Pundit
reports, “Residents of St. Louis County, MO met in front of the IRS
offices on May 21, 2013 to protest the IRS’ practice of targeting and
harassing conservatives, patriots and Tea Party supporters. There were
no city or county police there, ONLY DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY POLICE.”

Given that officers from the Department of Homeland Security were at
TEA Party IRS protests in both St. Louis, MO, Melbourne and Orlando, FL
but not in Sarasota, FL indicates targeting? It should be noted that the
IRS offices are federal buildings and the DHS has a role in protecting
federal buildings in the US. If any other groups noticed the same presence of DHS officers at their protest or the lack thereof please contact WDW."

"MARK LEVIN: The Republican party is filled with weak, scared, fearful
men and women in Washington, D.C. who try to rationalize what they're
doing, which isn't much of anything. And then lash out against people
who are calling their attention to the perilous future that is being
placed before us and demanding action. Not radical action, not
right-wing action, none of that. Action based on our founding
principles, within our Constitutional construct. That's what we're up
against.

Maybe Bob Dole couldn't be nominated today and perhaps that's a good
thing. And it's a good thing that Olympia Snowe has left the Senate
because she had a disastrous career of contributing to this monstrosity.
I don't have a problem with her comments given what she's done and
where she's from. They're self-serving, quite frankly. But the rest of
us, who haven't served in the Senate or the House, haven't served in the
office of the presidency, I think we have a much clearer view of what
the hell is going on in this country. (Mark Levin Show, May 28, 2013)" via Mark Levin twitter

And yet Bachmann arguably paved the way for other Tea Party leaders
in Congress, notably Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who followed in Bachmann's
footsteps this year by giving a separate Tea Party response
to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. She also--as
some on the left grudgingly admit--has been one of the most competent
members of Congress, serving with distinction on the House Intelligence
Committee.

It remains to be seen exactly why Bachmann chose to retire. She faced tough re-election prospects, and is fending off questions
about her campaign's compliance with Federal Election Commission rules
after a former aide filed a complaint against her. Bachmann insists that
she has complied with all rules and that the investigation into those
allegations has nothing to do with her decision. The full story will
eventually emerge."....

The report reveals a sweeping change in traditional gender
roles and family life over a few short decades: The number of married
mothers who out-earn their husbands has nearly quadrupled, from
4 percent in 1960 to 15 percent in 2011. Single mothers, who are sole
providers for their families, have tripled in number, from 7 to 25
percent in the same period.

“The decade of the 2000s witnessed the most rapid change in the
percentage of married mothers earning more than their husbands of any
decade since 1960,” said Philip Cohen, a University of Maryland
sociologist who studies gender and family trends. “This reflects the
larger job losses experienced by men at the beginning of the Great
Recession. Also, some women decided to work more hours or seek better
jobs in response to their husbands’ job loss, potential loss or
declining wages.”...

Although the trend toward mothers who pull in the biggest part of the
family income has been on the rise as more women have become educated
and entered the workforce, the recession has accelerated the trend, said
Sarah Jane Glynn, an analyst with the Center for American Progress.

“Part of what’s happening is that more men have been getting laid off
and are having difficulty finding work,” she said, noting that the
number of married wives who are sole earners has increased since 2007.
“And with the way the recovery’s played out, some men who lost their
jobs wound up taking others that paid less.”"...via Free Republic.

U.S. President Barack Obamarecently indicated he was
scaling back the drone strike programme, winning cautious
approval from Pakistan.

Pakistani security officials and tribesmen said the drone
fired two missiles that struck a mud-built house at Chashma
village, 3 km (2 miles) east of Miranshah, the administrative
town of North Waziristan.

They said seven people were killed and four wounded. It was
not immediately clear if the victims were the intended targets.

Prime Minister-elect Nawaz Sharif said this month that drone
strikes were a "challenge" to Pakistan's sovereignty. "We will sit with our American friends and talk to them
about this issue," he said.Obama's announcement of scaling back drone strikes was
widely welcomed by the tribespeople of North Waziristan, where
drones armed with missiles have carried out the most strikes
against militants over the past seven years, sometimes with
heavy civilian casualties.

Pakistan is a key ally in the U.S. war on terror but, while
combating militancy is still a high priority, polls show
Americans' main concerns are the economy and other domestic
issues such as healthcare.
(Reporting by Jibran Ahmad; Editing by Nick Macfie and Paul
Tait)"

"Michael O’Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, saidthe use of drones in the Middle East is already on the decline, thanks
to earlier administration policy decisions, a lowered threat and the
damage the strikes have caused to relations with Pakistan."...

"The U.S. continues to spawn the very
Terrorism problem it claims to combat, with the media helpfully in tow.""Thatthe U.S. is creating the very Terrorism problem it claims to be
combating is one of the most crucial points in discussions of American
Terrorism policy...but it barely is heard in American political discourse. Further
bolstering that fact is the work of Noor Berham, who has spent three
years systematically documenting the results of American drone attacks in Pakistan with on-the-scene photojournalism: Noor
Behram says his painstaking work has uncovered an important — and
unreported — truth about the US drone campaign in Pakistan’s tribal
region: that far more civilians are being injured or dying than the Americans and Pakistanis admit....

“For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant,”
he said. “I don’t go to count how many Taliban are killed. I go to
count how many children, women, innocent people, are killed”...According to Noor Behram, the strikes not only kill the innocent but injure untold numbers and radicalise the population.

“There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can’t
find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say
that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own
homes, and only because we are Muslims."...====================== Obama has "providedthe image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline....This image of weakness is being exploited"....

"Obama was naive to believe that one only needed to adopt a new tone and show more respect in order to dispel deep-seated reservations about the free world....But Washington has provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline to the societies there.This image of weakness is being exploited by Salafists and al-Qaida,who are active in North Africa from Somalia to Mali."

"One thing is clear: If jihadists believe they can attack American installations and kill an ambassador on the anniversary of Sept. 11, then America's deterrent power has declined considerably. For a superpower, it is not enough just to want to be loved. You have to scare the bad guys to keep them in check.""

"Police are looking for as many as six or seven Somali men after two joggers were randomly attacked in Fridley.

Authorities said two joggers were the victims of what are being
labeled as random attacks on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and 3:50 p.m. The
joggers, both men, were on a path near East River Road and 37th Avenue
NE when the attacks took place.

Police said one man suffered a bloody nose in the attack and the
other has a sore throat. Authorities said these attacks were not robbery
attempts and that the suspects randomly approached them and assaulted
them.

Authorities said the suspects are described of a group of six to seven Somali men, but did not have any more information.

Anyone with information about the incidents is asked to call Fridley Police." via Atlas Shrugs

-- an immediate halt of immigration by Muslims into
nations that do not currently have a Muslim majority population.

-- AFDI calls for laws providing that anyone seeking citizenship in the
United States should be asked if he or she supports Sharia law, and
investigated for ties to pro-Sharia groups. If so, citizenship should
not be granted.

-- AFDI calls for the cancellation of citizenship or permanent residency
status for anyone who leaves the country of his residence to travel for
the purpose of engaging in jihad activity, and for the refusal of
reentry into his country of residence after that jihad activity."

For more than two years she was taken on
"missions" to abandoned garages, men's bathrooms, apartments and hotels,
enduring hours with multiple men so gang members could get money, pot
or booze. Though her mother confronted two of the men twice early on and
warned them the girl wasn't even 13, they continued to prostitute her.

Eventually some of the gang members took her on the road to new customers in Nashville,
Tenn., while the man she called her "boyfriend" allegedly used a
cellphone to send images of her engaging in sex acts with men in the car
along the way."...

"Reader KF sent this, "Minnesota used to be a friendly, safe slice of
middle America. Minnesotans are generally welcoming and accepting
people. The vibe has changed though. Now cities from Minneapolis to
Rochester, have begun to resemble something a little like downtown
Mogadishu. The new immigrants are NOT welcoming.. even hostile to their
neighbors. In some neighborhoods, groups of muslim children, "chase"
people even older people to rob them of their money and groceries (of
course they only chase non muslims) They attack single non-muslim women
walking home from work and even harass men they perceive to be gay. It
is so bizarre.""